Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Capitalism cannot solve the problems of the working class.This why a social revolution is historically necessary.The working class must achieve communist revolution.No amount of tinkering with the system can convert it into a system that satisfies the class interests of the working class. Reformism can never serve the class interests of the working class.Consequently the realisation of radical demands to the benefit the working class is impossible under capitalism. The claim that a programme of such demands is realisable under capitalism is a utopian claim. It constitutes an idealisation of capitalism and thereby its defence. It,therefore, promotes the sowing or reinforcing of illusions in capitalism. If such a programme is realisable then the struggle for communism is unnecessary.

The reason the recent austerity offensive against the working class has been mounted in Ireland and elsewhere by the capitalist class is because capitalism cannot meet the class needs of the modern worker. The recent global recession was an objective, not a subjective, event.

This means that it was not caused by capitalist greed, a nasty government or any other such subjective factor. It was due to the objective characteristics of the capitalist economic system that it broke out. This being so it follows that capitalism as an inherently obsolescent system must be replaced by a new objective system --communism. It is only by this dramatic revolutionary transformation of objectivity that the needs of the masses can be met. The only way that the inevitable problems manifested by the recession can be solved within capitalism (provisionally) is by an attack on the working class through strategies involving austerity. Radical demands advanced by the radical left, if realisable, would only deepen recessionary conditions thereby rendering working class conditions even more severe. In that sense these radical demands, instead of benefiting the working class,would tend to worsen for the latter. This is because, as I have been arguing, capitalism cannot solve the problems of the working class.

Whats more the solutions to the problems of the working class cannot be solved within a nationalist framework.The solution,social revolution,is only achievable on a global basis beginning in the most advanced capitalist countries such as the U.S. Given this there can be no social revolution on the island of Ireland independently of Western Europe.

Even if the working class achieved concessions prior to the global recession, that broke out in 2007/8, they would have contributed to the emergence of the economic and financial upheaval itself. This, as I have been arguing,is because capitalism cannot solve the problems of the working class.

In view of this the rhetoric by Sinn Fein, the Anti Austerity Alliance and the People Before Profit Alliance featuring on RTE's Prime Time programme amounts to nothing but illusion. Their election candidates showed no understanding of the need for revolution. Their rhetoric suggested that capitalism can be managed or reformed to the benefit of the working class by effectively taxing the rich and not the working class. Indeed the entire show confined itself to suggestions as to how to reform capitalism in one way or another. In that way the participants sought to effectively defend the capitalist system. Essentially all contributors were essentially advocating bourgeois politics. If the Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party are genuinely revolutionary they would have challenged RTE and its other contributors by advocating the need for revolution.

Friday, October 3, 2014

I watched with interest the programme called The
People's Debate on TV3 chaired by Vincent Browne on Wednesday night
October 1st.

Not surprisingly each of the contributors, with one exception, based
their comments on the assumption that all solutions to the problems of
the Irish working class are solvable within the framework of
capitalism.They do not see capitalism as the cause of the problems
experienced by the Irish working class. They do not see that the only
solution to the problems of the working class is social revolution
involving the replacement of capitalist society with communist society.

Many, if not most, of the contributors, were advocating the reforming of
capitalism in one way or another. They failed to make clear that the
problem is not the way capitalism is structured but capitalism itself.
It is an obsolescent system that cannot meet the needs of the working
class.

People from the Anti-Austerity Alliance and People Before Profits
featured prominently on the show in suggesting capitalist solutions to
working class problems. They want to save capitalism from itself. Both
these organisations are fronts for The Socialist Party and the Socialist
Workers Party respectively.Yet as radical socialist, even Marxist,
parties, they support capitaltism while pretending to be against it.

Parties such as the SP, SWP and Sinn Fein are essentially no different
from each other nor from Fine Gael, the Labour Party and Fianna Fail.
They are all bourgeois nationalist parties competing for power within
the capitalist system. Reformism is still alive and well and embedded
within the Irish working class movement.

Thursday, May 22, 2014

State expenditure is largely unproductive expenditure. It thereby does
not produce value. This means it constitutes a deduction as opposed to
an increment in total surplus value. This involves a corresponding fall
in the rate of accumulation of capital. The latter tends to ultimately
manifest itself in the form of a fall off in industrial growth.

As valorisation becomes increasingly difficult capitalism is compelled
to reduce state expenditure. To counteract this it engages in increasing
privitisation of its assets --denationalisation. It becomes
increasingly impossible, then, for the state to extend nationalisation.
The government does not privatise its state assets because it enjoys
hurting the working class. Because of the specific nature of the
objective conditions it is forced to privatise.

Under these circumstances calls for nationalisation and increased state
spending are utopian and idealistic.These calls fail to correspond with
objective reality. These calls then amount to no more than the deception
and misleadership of the working class. By reinforcing illusions in the
working class concerning capitalism reformism obstructs the working
class from moving towards a realistic programme of communist revolution.

Because of monopoly capitalism's growing limits it must seek to minimise
the state. On the other hand with a few exceptions it needs to
eliminate or cut welfarism and related spending. To achieve this it may
even need to abolish the formal democracy obtaining in the West.

However savage cut-backs by the state can only lead to sharpened class
struggle. Under these conditions the emergence of class consciousness
may make itself felt among the working class leading to the birth of a
communist movement. Under these circumstances reformism will grow less
plausible and influential within the working class. In view of this it
is reactionary for reformism to make calls for nationalisation and
increased spending by the state.

Despite the 2008 financial crash there has been no visible shift by the
working class to a class conscious political paradigm. The working class
is still dominated by reformism in one form or another. Even the Greek
working class, despite its militancy, is still imprisoned within
reformist ideology. The working class of the world still supports the
capitalist system in one form or another.

Privatisation programmes undertaken by capitalist states must be
combatted by the working class fighting for the control and ownership of
these state assets. This revolutionary seizure of state assets is only
possible within the context of a sustained attack on the capitalist
state itself. This entails a class struggle for the abolition of the
state and the capitalist system. The seizure of state assets such as
health care services is only possible within the framework of a
revolutionary struggle to destroy the capitalist state. The proletarian
seizure of health care will bear a popular democratic character. Health
will no longer be based on profit nor on a political strategy designed
to serve the class interests of capitalism.

Health care is simultaneously a necessary reproduction and repair of
labour power.Much of nationalised health care forms part of the value of
labour power. But much of it is unproductive too. This means it is a
drain on surplus value. In that sense it directly contributes to the
fall in the general rate of profit together with a corresponding decline
in the economy.

Much of health care, whether private or public, serves to maintain the
value of labour power by ensuring that the latter is preserved in a
healthy condition. The health of the working class serves the interests
of capital. This is because the health of the working class is of
concern to the capitalist class with regard to the valorisation process.
An unhealthy working class is not going to be as available for
exploitation in the prodiction process.

Nationalisation was introduced as a strategy designed to help pacify the
working class in the interests of capitalist stability. It was also
designed to support the economy. But nationalisation has contributed to
falling profitability which has interfered with the rate of capital
accumulation. Because of this capitalism seeks to increasingly privatise
health care especially in a period, such as this, when the
profitability of capital is a growing problem.

Calls for the continuation and extension of health care nationalisation
are bourgeois demands. Instead the call must be for the ownership and
control of health care by the working class. This can only be achieved
by the abolition of the state and its capitalist basis. Under these
conditions the criterion of profitability no longer exists.

A part of the health service maintains the health of the active working
class. Consequently it maintains and even increases the value of labour
power which leads to a reduction in profit. Although the above is true
it tends to be counteracted by health care maintaining and even
improving the condition of labour power thereby maintaining and even
increasing its capacity to provide labour within the production process.
In that sense it cannot be simply regarded as unproductive activity.
However the part of the health service that does not maintain and
increase the present and future value of the working class is
unproductive. This constitutes a direct deduction from surplus value and
thereby contributes to the decline in economic growth. Clearly state
health care, overall, tends to adversely affect the growth rate.

The nationalised section of health care is funded by the state
effectively through taxation which is a revenue drawn from value. This
is a deduction both from surplus value and the value accruing to the
working class. It represents a transfer of value away from the
consumption of the active working class and the accumulation of capital.

Education plays a similar role to health within capitalism. A part of it
involves the training of labour power in the interests of the
capitalist reproduction process. This heightens the value of labour
power while improving the capacity of the worker to provide labour. The
result is upskilling of labour power. Overall this aspect of education
may more or less prove to neutral in ughrelation to capital
accumulation. Research contributes to increasing the productivity of
labour by promoting technological progress. However the residual part
constitutes a deduction from surplus value without any change in the
value of labour power. Much of this aspect of education is ideological.
It is designed to maintain and even increase citizen support for the
capitalist system through false consciousness. This feature of education
obviously contributes to the contraction of growth.

The armed forces, the police and much of the state bureaucracy
constitute significant deductions from surplus value. They constitute an
unproductive expenditure. Thereby they lead to a fall in the rate of
profit which further constrains the expansion of capital. This is why
governments seek to reduce the cost of these state features.

State expenditure, as a whole, constitutes an enormous deduction from
total surplus value. This largely unproductive spending involves an
enormous contraction in the accumulation of capital. It is a deduction
that has been growing significantly in the aftermath of the 2nd World
War. In the present period of growing problems, regarding the
accumulation of capital, there have been continuing feeble attempts to
shrink the state or at least reduce the annual rate of state spending.

The contradiction is that burgeoning state spending was undertaken to
compensate for the inherent limits of capital entailing mass
unemployment and many other problems.Yet this spending paradoxically
leads in turn to the reinforcement of these limits. Indeed much of the
entire state constitutes a deduction from total surplus value because it
constitutes unproductive expenditure. This is why there have been
attempts, not very successfully, to shrink the size of the modern state.
In this way capitalism is its own grave digger.

Capitalism, because of its growing limits, is decreasingly able to fund
welfare and other expenditure. Capitalism is unable to meet the demands
being made by left reformists such as the SP/SWP and other political
organisations. Consequently reformism deceives and misleads the working
class by suggesting that capitalism is manageable in such a way as to
solve the problems of the working class.

If capitalism can solve the problems of the working class then it is
superfluous and misleading for communists to call for social revolution.

The whistle blower controversy concerning the Gardai is a non-issue concerning the class interests of the working class.

The gardai, as a security force, forms an essential arm of the Irish
capitalist state. Consequently its function is to serve the class
interests of the capitalist class --not the working class. Therefore
calls for the improvement of this security force by "leftists" suggests
that the Gardai in some way represents the class interests of the
working class or is an apparatus of a state that stands independent of
the capitalist class.

The Gardai can never serve the interests of the working class despite
the degree to which it is reformed. Any reforms undertaken are, at most,
made to deceive workers into believing that the Irish state exists to
serve the interests of the wage worker.

The more a police force appears to serve the class interests of the
working class the more successful it may be in fooling the working
class.

All this stuff about misconduct within the Gardai has no real relevance
for workers. At most its so called misconduct merely exposes the
bourgeois nature of the force. Parliamentarians like Clare Daly, Mike
Wallace and Ming Flanagan by tub thumping in relation to the Gardai are
merely engaging in populism designed to fool the working class. Sinn
Fein, not to be outdone, has been engaged in a similar exercise.

Calling for the resignation of Allen Shatter, as Justice Minister, is of
no significance. It does not matter politically whether he resigns or
not.He will be simply replaced by another politician from the parties in
coalition government. By calling for his resignation the appearance is
created that his replacement by another politician from a bourgeois
party will make a difference.

The calling for the jailing of white collar crime is another issue that
is not the business of the working class. Prisons are oppressive
bourgeois institutions.

The only correct call, from the standpoint of the wage worker, is the call for the abolition of the Gardai.

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Sinn Fein claim that the recent arrest of Gerry Adams by the PSNI had a
political character designed to damage Sinn Fein. It claims that there
is a dark element within the PSNI. It also slanders Dolores Price and
Ivor Bell.

The above claims are a further reinforcement of the reactionary nature
of this political party. Its claims suggest that the PSNI as a necessary
part of the British imperialist state is non-political. As an organic
part of the capitalist state the PSNI is of necessity political. When
the latter intervenes in demonstrations organised by nationalists or
loyalists it is acting politically. Ironically for Gerry Adams and the
stalinist like Sinn Fein the six county police are only political when
they arrest Gerry. It is not being political when they arrest a
"dissident" Republican but when they arrest Gerry it is. The point is
that when Sinn Fein opportunistically accepted the establishment of the
PSNI it was, ipso facto, accepting the entire force. Sinn Fein cynically
want to see the PSNI like the parson's egg.

The essential point is that Sinn Fein/IRA betrayed its core principles
many years ago when it officially accepted the existence of political
partition and its two reactionary states on both sides of the border.
This means it accepts the validity of the imperialist domination of the
island of Ireland.

Furthermore it is highly unlikely that the arrest of Gerry was
undertaken without the consent of the British government. Sinn Fein
knows this but seeks to reduce the arrest to the level of an aberration
caused by a cabal within the police service. This is because Sinn Fein
supports both British and Irish capitalism. And this is why its
opportunist economic program in the South is based on the absurd
assumption that economic and social problems are solvable within
capitalism. This assumption and the programme built on it means that
Sinn Fein is not an anti-capitalist formation. Neither is its success
largely due to its performance. It is due largely to the recent world
crash and the consequent exposure of Fianna Fail, the Green Party, Fine
Gael and the Labour Party. Sinn Fein is inherently a bourgeois
opportunist party.

The party's denigration of Dolours Price, Brendan Hughes and others is
an indication as to the degree to which Sinn Fein has descended into the
mire. Incidentally it is an indication of the journalistic cowardice to
which Ed Moloney has descended as evidenced by his comments on the
recent arrest of Gerry Adams. In the interview on American radio he
effectively accepted that the interviews with Price and Hughes had a
dubious character.

Concerning the abduction, killing and disappearance of Jean McConville
by the IRA let me say this: If Gerry Adams was seriously suspected of
being directly involved in her killing then why did the British
government, the Irish government, Fianna Fail, the PDs, Fine Gael and
the Labour party negotiate with him or support such negotiations leading
to the GFA? The British and Irish governments were prepared to
negotiate an agreement with a political leader who was understood to be a
leading member of the IRA and thereby responsible for killings and
bombings including the McConville killing.

Given the establishment of the GFA it makes no sense to punish
individuals who were members of the IRA. It makes no sense to hound them
on the question as to whether they were IRA members. This problem
should have been sorted out during the GFA negotiations. I would have
thought that secret diplomacy by the involved parties would have covered
this. Again the opportunism of Sinn Fein/IRA is again exposed if there
was no settlement concerning this in this regard. It is now being
hoisted by its own petard.

Overall the McConville issue is being venally exploited by sections of
the bourgeois media and the political establishment to damage Sinn Fein.
The foregoing no more care about Mrs McConville than they do the
victims of HSE incompetence. To conclude: The Adams arrest may have been
carried out as part of a plan to get an agreement on past actions of
individuals from both the Republican and Loyalist camps. Such an
agreement might bring to an end the arrest, trial and imprisonment of
activists for their previous actions. This makes me wonder whether these
recent events were choreographed by Sinn Fein and the British
government. Gerry looked well for a guy kept in detention for four days
and subjected to continuous questioning especially as he had not eaten
for the first two days of his detention.